David Walton - The Genius Plague

“It means they’re keeping the president in the dark?” Shaunessy asked.

“Possibly,” Melody said. “But more likely it means the president knows exactly what General Barron plans to do with McCarrick’s discovery, and he approves.”

“So we’ve got nothing,” I said.

Melody raised her hands in an expressive shrug. “We’re not beaten yet,” she said. “Don’t give up. We’ll keep doing whatever we can to find ways to stop this thing.”

The others kept talking, but I stopped listening. It was out of our hands now. Barring a miracle, by the time the week was out we’d all either be nuked into our constituent atoms to make way for the fungus to dominate the Earth, or else we’d be the zombie slaves of whatever human was pulling our strings. Mind control would be part of humanity’s future, whether from the fungus or from ourselves. It made me feel very tired.

I kept thinking about the phone call from my brother. He had known, somehow, that I was there in the server room, despite the fact that he had called from Brazil. It implied that the fungal network was more connected than we had surmised. Where Paul was, he had no electronic infrastructure, and yet input from the server room—possibly even a security camera feed—had somehow reached him.

“Come and see me,” he had said. In the depths of the rainforest? It was ludicrous. The infection had in some ways made him so smart, and yet in other ways he was disconnected from reality. He seemed to expect everyone else in the world to enthusiastically accept a fungal parasite in their brains, and to be surprised when they didn’t.

My pocket vibrated and then rang. Startled, I fished out my dad’s iPhone, my heart pounding. I was so used to the prohibition against phones in the NSA buildings by now that a ringing cell phone at work was enough to dump a rush of adrenaline into my bloodstream. But of course, we weren’t in an NSA building, and nobody knew what correct security procedures were anymore.

I looked at the screen and recognized my father’s home number. “Hello?” I said.

“Neil?”

“Mom! How are you? How’s Dad?”

I felt guilty for how little time I had managed to spend with my parents. I had essentially abandoned them there at the hospital, while their doctor fought her own infection in another wing. But what else could I have done? I couldn’t trust my dad on his own, and I couldn’t very well bring him to the NSA.

“He’s okay, or at least he was,” my mom said. “But they won’t let me see him anymore.”

“What? Why not?”

“Some people came and moved him. They said he was dangerous, and they’d take care of him. They wouldn’t let me go with him.”

“Where are you?” I asked, then remembered that, of course, she must be at Dad’s house, because that’s the phone she had called from. “Stay there,” I said. “I’ll be right over. We’ll go to the hospital together, and we’ll figure this out.”

I made my apologies to the team. “I have to go,” I said. I explained to them what was happening. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad,” I said. “Somebody may be taking the infection seriously and quarantining patients. But I’m afraid it’s something worse.”

I took the roads at top speed, trying not to think about the possibility that my dad had fallen into the hands of Dr. McCarrick’s staff. I had no idea where he had found his collection of infected subjects. It seemed possible they were casing hospitals for recognized symptoms and then descending with the authority of USAMRIID to whisk patients away.

I crunched into the driveway and was surprised to see no cars parked by the house. I tried the door, found it open, and stepped inside. “Mom?” No answer. Had she misunderstood and driven to the hospital without me?

I climbed the stairs slowly, afraid of what I might discover. “Hello? Is anyone home?”

Silence. I continued up. My father’s bedroom door was closed. I touched the handle and hesitated, remembering the trap at Paul’s lab. I took a deep breath, held my sleeve over my mouth and nose, and swung the door wide.

My father and mother sat on the bed facing me, holding hands. They were not the only people in the room. Before I could register who the others were, I was tackled from behind, knocked to the floor by someone big. I thrashed and tried to get up, but more people jumped on me, strangers, holding my arms and legs. “I’m sorry,” my mother said. “Neil, I’m so sorry.”

They pinned me down and someone wrapped duct tape around my ankles. I caught a glimpse of Mei-lin leaning over me, her face impassive. “Do it,” she said.

Of course. Mei-lin had gotten out, had probably let my father out as well. Lauren hadn’t been able to hold her there against her will and had eventually let her go free. Or maybe Lauren herself was infected. It didn’t matter. They had deceived me, all of them, and I had walked into it as easily as a cow into a slaughterhouse.

My mother leaned over me holding a small Ziploc bag of white powder. “No, Mom,” I said. “Don’t do it. I don’t want this.”

“It’s for your own good, honey,” she said. She opened the bag, used a teaspoon to scoop a small amount of the powder, and blew it in my face. I tried to hold my breath, but one of the strangers holding me down punched me unexpectedly in the stomach. I gasped for air, involuntarily inhaling thousands of spores.

I coughed and spat, but I knew it would do no good. They coated the insides of my lungs now, taking root. I was one of them now, or would be once the sickness ran its course.

“Hold him still,” Mei-lin said. She leaned over me with a syringe. I kicked out, trying to get free, or at least to knock it out of her hand, but I was held too tightly. The needle bit into my arm, and she pressed the plunger home. “This is just to help you relax,” she said. “You have a long trip ahead of you, and you’ll be feeling pretty sick.”

Resist it , I thought. Don’t let it take control . But there was nothing to resist. The fungus wasn’t in my mind yet.

“Dad!” I shouted. “Help me!”

My father turned his head and looked at me. If there was any uncertainty in his mind, any struggle for control, I couldn’t see it in his face. “Don’t fight it, son,” he said. “There’s no point. You’ll understand soon enough.”

I had the vague awareness of being shuffled into a car and then out of it and into another one. The second car had a very loud engine, persistent enough that it seemed to blot out thought. It was only after what seemed like a very long time that I realized it wasn’t a car at all but an airplane. I gradually became aware of having arms and legs, and my vision swam into focus. I was propped into a seat in a small passenger jet, probably a private one generally used by corporate executives. Out the window, I saw only ocean.

“We’ll be landing in Panama in thirty minutes,” said a female voice. “Then we’ll refuel for the final jump to Porto Velho.”

My chest burned. I tried to take a deep breath, but it caught in my throat, and I coughed violently. I felt something wet on my chin.

“He’s waking up,” said a male voice.

Mei-lin appeared next to me. She wiped my mouth and chin with a warm cloth. “Not much longer,” she said. I felt a distant pain as a needle slid into my arm. I tried to move, to push her away, but my limbs didn’t want to obey me. A few minutes later, I slipped away again.

When I came to again, the plane was on the ground and the engine had stopped. “Can you walk?” Mei-lin asked.